Award-winning play fathoms what matters at end of life…
“Nothing but a breath - a comma - separates life from life everlasting. It is very simple really.”
Imagine being in the prime of your life, highly respected and at the height of a stellar academic career. Then being told you have just weeks to live. This is the story of Vivian Bearing, a fiercely rational academic with a passion for poetry. A strong and independent woman brutally stopped in her tracks and left grappling with life, and what’s left of it, in the face of a certain death sentence.
Wherever we are in our own lives, Vivian prompts us to consider what truly matters when the end of our road comes into sight.
More than a play about death, Wit is a play about life. As Vivian comes to terms with who she is and what her life has meant, we are left wondering if we are living in a way that will enable us to successfully meet death, or at least conquer our fear of it.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Wit swims into the depths exploring the balance between head and heart; what makes a life well-lived, death and the significance of a semicolon.
These themes are poignantly expressed as Vivian pivots between reflections of her life as a Professor of Poetry specialising in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne and her time in hospital enduring relentless medical interventions. She is learning and reflecting even while slowly losing the battle with cancer.
As she succumbs to the vulnerability and loss of control her terminal diagnosis bring, we see moments of tenderness as she admits her aloneness and receives support from her nurse and a touching visit from her former professor and mentor.
Despite her increasing frailty, Vivian maintains insight and humour as she reassesses her life and the choices she made. And with her nurse’s encouragement exercises her final choice, the manner in which her story ends.
This is the fourth production from Clock and Spiel Productions, (after critical and popular hits Freud’s Last Session, Metamorphosis, and The Screwtape Letters) and follows their vision of bringing distinctive, culturally daring and deeply human works to the stage.
Directed by Helen Tonkin, Wit stars Cheryl Ward, Chantelle Jamieson, Hailey McQueen, Yannick Lawry, Shan-Ree Tan, Matthew Abotomey, Nyssa Hamilton and Jan Langford-Penny. Creative Crew: Victor Kalka, Maddison Huber, Adam Jones, Kaitlyn Symons
www.seymourcentre.com/events/event/wit
Photo credit Alison Lee Rubie